10-13-06 Habeus Corpus

It's a long trail from the National Security Act of 1947 to the Military Commissions Act of 2006, but the basic trend has been to establish a shadow government and let that shadow government do whatever the hell it wants. To say that this is all a recent development is to have only noticed the trend during the Bush Administration. A little less than four decades ago, this kind of thing bubbled up to the surface... sort of... with the Nixon Administration, at least to the point where enough people realized what a sleazeball the guy was before it was too late. Now, however, it's obvious that not enough people realized what sleazeballs the current bunch of criminals in power really are before all this crap had gone down.

It was Eisenhower's farewell speech that was the first attempt by a public official to tell the American public what was looming on the horizon. And it was the Kennedy Administration that lent some hope to the prospect that this would not happen to our country. On June 10, 1963, this was affirmed by JFK in his famous Pax Americana speech, foreswearing against the very thing that has now come about.

He was killed. And on that day, I believe that America was also killed.

We can hope that Habeus Corpus will be defended in the Supreme Court, and the attempted erasure of it by congress in the Military Commissions Act will be struck down for the grossly unconstitutional proviso that it is.

But a far more ominous thing has happened. The American public has not screamed in protest against this legislation. The major media have not made it the biggest news story, and the fact of the matter is that some closeted gay former representative from Florida has America more engrossed than the loss of the most basic and fundamental freedom being erased by the sleazeballs in power.

So, let's do a little reading. Let's find out what Habeus Corpus is all about.

Answers.com: Habeus Corpus

Wikipedia: Habeus Corpus

Those are two places to find out what it really means, where it came from, and so forth.

It goes back to the Magna Carta in 1215 in England, article 39, which states, "No free man shall be arrested, or imprisoned, or deprived of his property, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor shall we go against him or send against him, unless by legal judgement of his peers, or by the law of the land." This single principle allowed the rest of the history of freedom to unfold for the individual in Western Civilization. It is the foundation upon which all other personal rights and freedom rests.

Do you think that the erasure of Habeus Corpus is the single most horrific political event to have happened in the history of modern civilization?

I certainly do!

But, apparently, the big story isn't big enough to really take over the major media the way that, say, an OJ Simpson trial would. It's all about ratings, and the free market economy certainly applies to major media news. What sells is sleaze, violence, and fear. Of course, if they really wanted to be responsible they could certainly sell the erasure of Habeus Corpus on the fear factor!

But they don't.

After all, it's a Latin phrase... and who the hell can get dumbed down America to pay any slightest attention to anything that's written in Latin???

I only pray that Carl Rove's "October Surprise" doesn't work... and the control of congress slips out of the Republicans' hands after the election.